Chapter 1 — Someone Else

LYDIAS POV

"I want to get married to someone else, Lydia."

I still had my wine glass halfway to my mouth when he said it. I set it down, looked at him across the table. My husband, the man i had put on my best white dress for tonight.

I had spent an hour getting ready, done my makeup carefully, worn the teardrop earrings he bought me on our first anniversary because tonight was our third and i wanted him to remember. I just wanted to look special on this special night, so I thought.

I had planned this dinner for a week.

He had just said those words in the middle of it like they were nothing.

"Say that again," I said.

David kept his eyes on the table. "Lydia—"

"Look at me… and say it again." I stuttered

He looked up, jaw tight.  His eyes carried guilt that I only recognized now, i just hadn't known what to call it all these months, but I knew now.

"I want to get married to someone else," he said.

My fingers found each other on my lap underneath the table. I laced them together and squeezed until I felt my own pulse pushing back against my knuckles.

"Who David?" I blinked fast, pushing the tears from falling.

David said nothing.

That silence stirred my stomach. I pressed my joined hands harder together and looked at him across the candlelight, this man I had built a life around. I watched him choose the table over my eyes and i knew the answer right there.

I thought about the evening I forwarded Nina's profile from the agency. It was just normal routine, information shared between a husband and wife. I had been in the bedroom with my laptop when I sent it. I heard his phone buzz from the living room. I heard nothing  after that so I walked out and found him sitting completely still, phone in his hand, staring at the screen with an expression i had never seen on his face before.

I had asked him what was wrong.

He said nothing, he immediately locked the screen and reached for the remote.

I stood there for three seconds and then went back to the bedroom and told myself  I was tired of reading into things. This was probably  nothing.

"It's Nina right?"  My own voice surprised me. It was steady and almost gentle, like the name wasn’t doing harm to my chest. "It's Nina, isn't it?"

David closed his eyes.

“Oh!” I scoffed, pressing my fingers to my mouth and held the rest of it in.

"How long?"

"Lydia, I need you to—"

"How long, David?" I barked.

He exhaled slowly. "A few months."

A few months?

That settled in. A woman I had hired to keep my home intact was keeping my home and my man?.

 A few months of lying in this man's bed and reaching for him in the dark and telling myself the distance between us was just stress, just work, just a season that marriages went through and came out strong?

A few months of being a fool in a white dress?

"You knew her," I said. "Before I hired her?"

He said nothing.

"David." My voice dropped lower. "You already knew Nina before she walked through our front door?, Say something you bitch!!" I barked, with tears holding back.

"We went to school together." He said it carefully, picking his words. "Years ago,  before I met you. I had feelings for her then, but we didn’t get to be together and I thought it was finished, I never knew seeing her again would bring—"

"You never knew what?" I stood up. My chair scraped back hard against the floor. "You had history with this woman, David. She walked into our home and you said absolutely nothing?"

"I didn't think it would go this far—" David said, lowering his head.

"Did you know?" The question came out sharper than the rest. "When I called you that evening and told you her name, when I forwarded her profile and you went quiet on the other side of that room — did you already know who she was?"

He looked at the table.

"David." My voice was shaking now and I couldn't stop it. "Did you lie to me that night?"

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life.

I pressed one hand flat on the dining table. My wedding ring hooked on the table cloth and i stared at it., I stared at it.

"Get out of this room," I said.

"Lydia, please, just let me—"

"David." I looked at him with everything i had left. "Get out."

He stood slowly. He looked at me once more, the way a man looks when he knows there are no words left that could  work, and then he walked out. His footsteps moved down the hallway. The dining room became silent, only echoes of David's last words in my head.

I stood there.

The candle still burning, both plates untouched. The wine glass sitting exactly where i had set it down when the evening broke apart.

I sank back into my chair and sat there with my hands on the table and my eyes shut, “Please let this be a dream”, I stuttered.

My face crumpled, my breath fractured into pieces. I pressed both hands over my mouth and bent forward, the last time I cried this way was at my mother’s funeral.

I felt the tears sliding down her face, uncontrollably, carrying my makeup with them, dropping one by one onto the white fabric of my anniversary dress. Dark little stains blooming on the white. I watched them fall and couldn't stop them.

I cried so bad my ribs ached, then I sat up. Wiped my face slowly, looked at the room around me like I was seeing it clearly for the first time.

My hands moved and rested on my stomach.

Twelve weeks.

I wanted to tell him about it tonight, I wanted it to be a surprise. He just told me he was leaving me for the woman I brought into our home.